Topic: Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP. - page 689. (Read 2032265 times)

Someone was gushing over gmax over on reddit so in the interest of balance I had to show him this. For those who don't know, aantonop is Andreas ;

That's a really persuasive argument  from someone I respect.

The other way to question this though is that somehow btc units are fed through the peg and through some magic stocks, bonds , smart contracts, altcoins, etc come out the other side and somehow this is not inflationary? What if it just breaks the entire system?

Maybe you don't know this because you're young and new here and this may come as a shock to you, but soundbites don't actually prove anything.

In fact, those soundbites remind me of a conversation I had a little over two years ago:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.1227012

That is where I am at also, trying to understand the downsides and risks.

Sure the free market will govern most options, not all will be successful, I am skeptical mainly because of the lack of attention to the downside risks.

Its not forced, it is offering another choice of a new type of altcoin that happens to be backed by BTC.

As for whether the market wants that particular solution, we will have to see.

All options including restricting the numbers of BTC able to be converted? That seems like a hard sell for miners to run that software if it can diminish the value of the mainchain. Thoughts?

All of that is true, ergo altcoins exist.

Your desired "forced buy in to BTC" is improper and unnecessary.

All options are feasible, even ugly tokens not pegged to the SideChain that is used to convert them.

Can a sidechain restrict the number of BTC converted to sidechainCOIN?

If they can be restricted, than value of scCOIN can grow but only be obtained via direct purchase and not btc conversion when the cap is hit. This removes value from the mainchain and will only be converted back to BTC if the scCOIN becomes less valuable than BTC again.

If it can’t be restricted then if the scCOIN value rises so does the value of BTC. Since anyone can use this extra value by converting BTC to it.

This should be true as far as both the mainchain and sidechain are representing value as a number. But what if the sidechain is more like a colored coin where an asset is represented by a token. I don’t know how that would affect the mainchain positively or negatively restricted or unrestricted.

  That doesn't address the question, but the profit motive is missing how do they profit? As setup now Bitcoin isn't the winner.

Vision.

Sounds great, help me connect the dots. VC's invest $21M to improve Bitcoin, we assume it is going to add value to our Bitcoin holdings (at least you insist it will) yet BlockStream has no business plan, and the asset that is to go up in value as a result of this donation investment is not owned in large quantities by the VS's.

What is it they know that I don't, why not invest in BTC, or a company with a business plan? Or is it just that I don't know the business plan and they don't need BTC to capitalize on the proposed Bitcoin protocol change?

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/bitcoin-as-a-technology-bloomberg-panel-TnFJvX9~SOOgqr4UoiWRHw.html

WOW at Adam Ludwin from Chain hits a HOME RUN on the first question of the day in this panel.

Adresses straight away the blockchain without bitcoin myth and tears it apart.

That article is from November 7th, I see. Well, 6 days later he was upping his attack rhetoric on bitcoin:



He's tweeted that at least twice:

https://twitter.com/JamesGRickards/status/533306873525854208

https://twitter.com/JamesGRickards/status/533057485264134144


I get where he's coming from; it must be very annoying to spend your life advocating for something which gets less and less relevant every day only to have a bunch of young irreverent nerds eat your lunch when you're a couple years from retirement.

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/bitcoin-startup-buttercoin-lands-wedbush-as-investor-qW8Vi84nTaq4fbHea_TfJQ.html

Wedbush purchasing undisclosed stake in Buttercoin.

boom

In no way is the "Bitcoin's bullet proof BTC/blockchain linkage" broken.  The coins aren't actually moved to the other chain, they are held on the mainchain like gold in a vault and a representation which is NOT BTC and can't be spent at coinbase for example, appears on the sidechain.

There is no way sidechains break the 21 million scarcity limit of real BTC.  And anything that a sidechain could do to "dilute" the space (that is by creating a new token type) can be done with an altcoin today, and that has gotten nowhere.  Any "betrayal" of the BTC "brand" that can be done with sidechains can equivalently be done much more easily (and with the same brand damage) with centralized solutions.  We've seen it over and over again; Gox ponzi didn't kill BTC, and SCponzi won't either.  But the risk of SCponzi will certainly make the mainchain the preferred place to hold and make large transfers.  Sidechains will make Bitcoin the preferred long term store of value, because tremendous utility is just a chain transfer away.

  And how is Gox going to go Ponzi when the GoxBTC and GoxUSD on its sidechain must match the BTC "locked" on the mainchain and the USD in their bank accounts (which can be audited)?

If a multi-token sidechain is created with scBTC and inflata-Coin-to-make-devs-rich, what do you think people will do?  Probably not even touch the sidechain.  But assuming they do, they will hold the scBTC and when they need to "use" the sidechain features the require inflata-coin, they'll buy the inflata-coin moments before spending it.

But without sidechains you really do risk a new token that comes along and takes massive market share.  We as a society are not ready to put stocks, mortgages, etc on a blockchain (because why have the risk of a new tech coupled with the return of an old stock).  But someday we WILL be.  And when we are, what's going to be the preferred payment?  Old stodgy BTC that you have to sign up for exchanges, do AML, etc to access real markets, or tradecoin which can be tranformed into GOOG 5 seconds after receipt?  There's a REASON gold shot up when ETFs appeared -- its called access to markets.  

What about the IOT (internet of things) token?  20 years from now, items in your house might be doing 500 txns per day for a total of < $5 automatically on your behalf... Sidechains allow BTC to scale beyond our wildest dreams to applications we can't even consider.

You are like the guy who said there's only use for 5 computers in the world.  

You should instead consider that the biggest risk to BTC right now is the sidechain-altcoin that Blockstream so "kindly" offered to build instead of integrating these technologies directly into BTC.  That altcoin has the potential to leave BTC in the backwaters of digital currencies (except that I believe in the core devs in Blockstream to move the tech over).

Ok, that's probably the end of my rant... but my subsequent silence does not mean that you are right :-).  Honestly, I miss the great insights you guys (and mostly cypherdoc) provide about the larger world economic picture on this thread and hope that we can eventually get back to it!  But I'll tell you this; I'm a technologist and I've skipped from one newly breaking technology to the next for my entire career in startups; gaming, telecom in 1995-2000, storage, wireless, OSHW, bitcoin.  I'm telling you if sidechains CAN be done (honestly I haven't really verified the gory details of the automated 2-way peg myself) they WILL eventually be the dominant coin.  I proposed them in early 2012 (the concept not the mechanism)...  but don't worry to much, BTC will not die; it'll be the Rolls Royce with a valuation above what we have today, while the sidechain-enabled coin takes 99% of the market.

EDIT: tl;dr. Bitcoin is the zerg.  It will take over everything thru sidechains.

I'm afraid this, is actualy a very shortsighted way to see things.

I'd like to suggest you this reading http://wefivekingsblog.blogspot.ca/2014/01/the-universe-wants-one-exchange.html if you haven't had the chance yet.

you will understand that your complaisance with Bitcoin as merely Sound Money might be misguided.

http://blockstream.com/2014/11/17/blockstream-a-champion-of-bitcoins-core-values/
http://blockstream.com/2014/11/17/blockstream-closes-21m-seed-round/








Sounds like bad guys  

maybe.

but those ppl are short sighted as the big column on the far right should be the goal.  there should be a column for gold: